A history of oil and gas in Vermont

A derrick is all that remains of a 1957 oil drilling effort in a field in St. Albans, Vt. The famous Yandow Oil Well was drilled to a depth of 4,500 feet. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed a bill into law making the Green Mountain State the first state to ban oil and gas fracking, but apparently drilling is still permitted. (Photo by Vermont Geological Survey)

In 2012, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) signed a bill into law making the Green Mountain State the first to ban fracking.

Fracking—short for induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing—may be controversial, but it is proving to be a highly successful means of extracting oil and natural gas from the ground—at least in more energy independent-minded states. With its fracking ban, and after Vermont Yankee closes, most of the state’s energy sources will be imported.

The ongoing controversy of running a natural gas pipeline through Addison County—to carry Canadian natural gas derived from fracking—continues to fire-up environmental activists in the state.

“This is a big deal,” Shumlin said in a news conference when Montpelier’s fracking ban went into effect. “This bill will ensure that we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy.”

Despite Vermont’s decision to forbid fracking within state lines, other states—such as Pennsylvania, Texas, Colorado and North Dakota—are moving forward with fracking and domestic energy which produce huge budget surpluses.

Fracking is already starting to reduce the nations’s oil imports and create thousands of high-paying jobs in the field and in service-support offices.

According to several news sources, including CNBC and MSNBC, by 2017 it is expected that fracking will help make the USA a world-class energy exporter again—up from its lowly status of a major importer of Middle-Eastern oil.

Various energy analysts foresee a rebirth of U.S. industrialization—thanks to cheaper homemade fracked oil and gas.

In some cases, as seen in the major fracking states, revenues generated from fracking have completely paid for education and social programs—all without raising property or income taxes. When Gov. Shumlin signed Vermont‘s anti-fracking law, he may have forever shut off a tax-free way of balancing Vermont’s budget—and then some.

The fact that a small portion of Vermont sits atop oil and natural gas deposits has been known since at least the 1940s, possibly earlier. And while fracking in Vermont may be banned, drilling the old fashioned way apparently is still legal with the proper permits.

“Dreams of oil and natural gas in the sedimentary rocks of the Champlain Lowlands have brought about surges of optimism over many years that Vermont would become an energy producer,” according to geologist Harold Meeks who wrote a book surveying the state’s resources, titled “Vermont’s Land and Resources”.

Meeks’ book was first published in 1986 and provided technical details about Vermont’s fossil fuel reserves; it also fueled interest in using new technologies to explore for deposits.

“The most recent enthusiasm was simulated by a well drilled to depth of 12,400 feet by Shell Canada just a few miles north of the Quebec boundary,” Meeks wrote in the mid 1980s.

According to the University of Vermont, the Champlain Valley was formed by a deep sedimentary basin, a typical feature where biogenic oil and gas is typically found.

As early as the mid 1950s, the American Gas Association had mapped the lake region in detail and designated it as a promising source for future oil and gas development.

During the 1956-57 period, several test wells were drilled on Grand Isle and around St. Albans; there were clear oil and gas signatures but nothing of commercial value was produced in this mid-century era before the advent of advanced fracking technology.

The remains of one large commercial drilling operation, which began in 1957, can still be seen on the old Yandow Farm in St, Albans.

The now famous Yandow well was drilled to a depth of 4,500 feet.

“The well, drilled by the Henderson Company, used a cable-tool rig typical of 20th-century wells in Texas. As time passed, the wooden blocks at the base of the derrick rotted and the derrick settled on the well head, tipping it about 30 degrees,” according to a Vermont Geological Survey summary.

When the Bellrose family of Swanton struck a pocket of natural gas —while drilling a 650-feet-deep water well, in 1957—it set of the on-again, off-again mini oil and gas exploration “boom”. This period of up and down booms , which ironically never produced anything, lasted into the mid 1970s.

“We had a new well drilled to 650 feet deep and hooked the water into the house. After you drew it from the tap it looked and tasted like Alka Seltzer,” Mrs. Lawrence Bellrose reported to Harold Meeks about the 1957 drilling effort. “(One day) my husband went down to the cellar... he struck a match and the room lit up with a ball of fire!”

In a special report to the Vermont Legislature in 1956, then State Geologist Charles Doll announced that, “It is nothing new to residents of the Champlain Valley in Vermont that natural gas occurs in certain water wells... The basin of sedimentary rocks possesses geologic features that warrant the exploration of this area for oil and gas.”

Finding oil and gas depends on detailed analysis of subsurface rocks. Structural maps of buried rock formations help geologists pinpoint where the best places are to search for oil and gas.